The Perils Of Island Life
by Phoebonica
Summary: Takes place after The End and The Beatrice Letters, and contains spoilers for both. A story of a girl and her family, and a man and his grief, and a story that is now complete.
1. Under The Weather

Disclaimer/Author's Note: I do not own ASOUE and am making no profit from this story.

Takes place after The End and The Beatrice Letters, and has spoilers for both. This is the first chaptered fic I've ever written. It's really not that different to my normal one-shots, it just turned out far too long to write all at once.

I hope it's not too obvious what Lemony's actually supposed to be saying.

**The Perils Of Island Life**

**Part 1 – Under The Weather**

"Are you certain you want to come with me?" Lemony asked for the third time, unrolling one of the lifejackets and inspecting it for mildew. "This will be a dangerous journey. I'm not even sure how we're going to land without wrecking ourselves."

"That's exactly why I do want to come," Beatrice said. "I don't want to have to hunt you down again only to find out you drowned." She regretted the words at once. That was too likely a possibility to be glib about. He should have reprimanded her for it somehow, but he just nodded in acknowledgement. Either he was used to her morbid humour or he thought she was simply being practical.

"At least this way," she said in a more gentle tone, lowering her suitcase into the boat, "whatever happens will happen to both of us."

"Hmm." Lemony rolled up the lifejacket again, apparently satisfied with its condition. "But you realise, whatever we find on the island will be more useful to me than to you. I need to go there to finish the story, but that won't tell us where the Baudelaires are now. And if something goes wrong… are you sure you want to take that risk?" He stood up, the boat rocking beneath him, and looked her in the eyes. A rare gesture. His voice was very soft. "I want you to find your family. I don't want to put you in danger."

Beatrice looked down at her shoes. He had a point. She'd be tagging along on his mission, really, when it might be better to stay behind and continue her own investigations. If they crashed together, it would all be over. She'd never see Violet, or Klaus, or Sunny again.

But she'd probably never find them by herself, either. And she had no intention of losing track of the one person who could help her. She looked up again, and tried to smile. "We don't know _what_ we'll find. Everything washes up there, you said so yourself. And do you have any idea how hard it was, finding a bat sitter in this town?"

"I'd imagine it was quite difficult," he said, as deadpan as ever. She hadn't really expected him to return the smile. Not really. "Baticeering is something of a dying profession." He looked up at the sky as if suspecting rain, although there were only one or two clouds on the horizon. "I think we have all the supplies we're going to need, so if you're sure…"

"I'm _sure_."

"Then we should go now while it's still light. Do you need me to help you down?" He held his arms out as if to demonstrate, about half the distance he'd need to reach her.

Beatrice stepped forward, watching, and he flinched. No, that was too strong a word, it was barely a blink, but he'd definitely tensed up as she got near him. Nothing anyone would notice who wasn't looking for it. Probably even he hadn't noticed.

She shook her head. "I can manage." She sat down, swinging her legs over the edge of the jetty.

* * *

It was Beatrice's turn to row again. She didn't really mind. When she wasn't rowing, apart from checking their rather outdated navigational instruments every so often to make sure they were still going in the right direction, there was nothing to occupy her mind but the waves. They'd lost all sight of land on the first day, and now it was hard to imagine there was anything more to the world than a circle of water. She'd tried reading, of course, but that made her seasick.

Her arms were aching, though, and she wondered how long it would be before it was Lemony's turn again. He was scribbling in his commonplace book, which he could do for about half an hour at a time before getting sick himself. He always sat the same way, curled up close to the prow, as far from her end as possible. Hardly ever speaking, unless it was to ask her a question. Which he did now, lowering his pen and frowning distractedly.

"Definitely white beans? That's what she told you?"

"I remember that salad." Beatrice pulled back on the oars a bit too hard, flicking water over herself and losing her rhythm for a few seconds. "Sunny made it once on my birthday." She blinked. Some of the water had gone into her eyes and made them sting. "I think it's your turn to row."

"Yes, you're right." He got up, wobbling slightly, and they switched positions. They must have done that close to a hundred times by now, Beatrice thought as she sat down, although maybe it just felt like that. The point was…

Well, there wasn't really a point. It was just an observation. But…

The _point_ was that this was the smallest boat that would hold them and all their supplies, and they'd switched position any number of times, and in all that time he hadn't touched her once. Not even brushing against her arm. Not even stumbling into her accidentally when a big wave hit them. If she leaned toward him he'd probably go over the side.

If she mentioned it he'd have no idea what she was talking about.

It was starting to upset her a little. _No_. Not upset. It was starting to irritate her, the way any character trait could become irritating when two people were confined to a small, boring space. This was why she preferred to be rowing, because there was less opportunity for her to fixate on pointless, irrelevant, unimportant things.

There was no reason for him to treat her as anything more than an associate, she hadn't expected that. They barely knew each other. He'd called her "Miss Baudelaire" for weeks when they first met, until it started to feel strange somehow and they'd reverted to first names. And he'd helped her as much as she'd hoped he would, and he was, as far as she could tell, as noble a person as she'd been told. And she'd known he was unsociable. She didn't take that personally at all. But if it made him this uncomfortable to be around her… if he hated it this much he could have told her that he didn't want her to come.

A drop of water hit the back of her hand. She jumped and wiped it away at once, praying he hadn't noticed, and then realised her eyes were dry. Another drop hit the boards between her feet.

"I think it's raining," she said.

Lemony looked up and gasped. "It's worse than that," he said, pointing behind her.

She turned. Thick, black clouds were forming on the horizon.

* * *

"How long do you think it's going to last?" Beatrice shouted. She could barely hear herself over the rain, amplified as it was by the tarpaulin they'd managed to stretch over the top of the boat before the storm hit them. It was already leaking in places. The best that could be said for it was that they weren't as cold or wet as they would have been without it.

"I've no idea," Lemony shouted back. At least she assumed that was what he'd said. It could also have been _another year_ but even he wasn't that pessimistic.

She closed her eyes. It didn't really improve things. She hadn't been able to see much anyway with her face pressed against the boards, and it wasn't as if she could pretend she was lying in bed, unless it was a hard, splintery bed that threw her around a lot.

Lemony said something that sounded like _bring a goat_. She couldn't think why they'd need to do that, unless it was to distract sharks – big ones, with hundreds of jagged teeth, moving through the water only inches from her face… or, maybe, what he'd said was that they should have rented a bigger boat. She needed to calm down. It was just rain. Just rain.

There was a _crack_, and a thump, and everything went blinding white. The boat seemed to fling itself into the air, tumbling Beatrice down towards the prow. She screamed, and heard Lemony scream with her.

They crashed together as the boat smacked down into the water again. Waves swept over them, pouring in at the sides, and Lemony grabbed her arm, yelling something she couldn't decipher. Even in her panic, she had time to be surprised. He was shivering. His hand was cold, but it was warmer than everything else she could feel. She wriggled closer to him. Thunder boomed overhead, and he gripped even tighter.

"You're hurting my arm," she called. In the dim light she could just make out his shape. He seemed to know that she'd spoken, because his mouth was moving in response although she couldn't hear the words, but not what she'd said because he didn't let go, and then the lightning struck again and another wave crashed over them and she decided she didn't mind that her hand was going numb.

She caught one phrase, or part of it. It sounded like _I'm sure that the beans were different_. "No way," she muttered, shaking her head, even though she knew he couldn't see or hear her. "You can't possibly still be researching me."

Another roar of thunder, another wave. The boat span, sending them sliding across the floor, clinging together. Frigid water soaked through Beatrice's jacket, chilling her skin.

_Above you_, Lemony was shouting. _Beatrice, above you!_

She looked up. They'd ended up wedged beneath the seat, and she could see the dark shape of something sticking over the edge. She reached up and pulled it down. A flashlight. "You mean this?" she asked, handing it to him. "I don't think it'll do much good."

He shook his head. "I – " he began, and then a wave bigger than all the rest smashed into them. The boat lurched sideways, nearly tipping them out. Beatrice clutched the edge of the seat, shrieking, flailing for balance as she slipped toward the freezing water.

She felt Lemony's arm round her waist, dragging her back, pulling her to him. His whole body trembled from fear or cold or both, and his breath against her ear was rapid and shuddery. She clung to him with one hand, bracing herself against the underside of the seat with the other.

They gave up on trying to speak after that.

* * *

Just when Beatrice had started to think it would never end, that the noise and the cold and the pelting rain would go on forever, there was the worst noise yet. A crashing, crunching, splintering sound, as the wood beneath her jolted and twisted, slamming her hard into the side of the boat. The wind dropped a little just then, so she heard her own gasp as the air was knocked out of her, and then Lemony's choking sobs.

"We're breaking up!" he wailed. "We're going to drown… we'll never survive this…"

Beatrice lay on her back, panting. There was a hole in the tarpaulin, just above her, and she stared through it at the swirling grey clouds. "I think we _have_ survived it," she said slowly. "We've stopped moving. I think we're _there_."


	2. Rediscoveries

**Chapter 2 – Rediscoveries**

The rain eventually stopped. They clambered out of the boat, Beatrice wincing in pain – something had hit her on the shins, and her back ached from being forced into odd positions. Lemony looked equally uncomfortable, bending down to rub his left ankle about where the tattoo was.

"Are you okay?" Beatrice asked.

He looked up, seeming surprised. "Yes, I'm just bruised, I think. It seems we both weathered that surprisingly well." He straightened up, turning to examine the boat. "Oh dear."

"It's not that bad," Beatrice said. "I can fix that." It was pretty bad. One side of the prow was in splinters, and a huge crack ran down the length of the boards, but she _could_ fix it. She'd learned repair techniques from an expert, and it would be weeks before they could leave anyway. "There must be plenty of debris here I can use."

"I'm sure you can," Lemony said. He looked at her, a strangely distant yet focused look, as if trying to remember where he'd seen her before. "You're a very capable person. I…" He trailed off, still with that strange expression.

"Yes?"

He shook himself, and blinked. "Never mind," he said, looking at the boat again. "Our first priority should be getting dry. We'll find the arboretum first, and then – " he climbed back into the boat as he spoke, picking up his typewriter case – "we can start investigating."

* * *

Half an hour later, Beatrice remembered those words and sighed. Lemony had spotted a broken lampshade floating past them, and was trying to retrieve it with a stick, muttering something about terrible eyesight and false trails.

She put down her suitcase and perched on top of it, wondering how he'd carry this along with all the other debris he'd gathered. Maybe he'd end up wearing it over his hat. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

He certainly _felt_ the cold, and he was even wetter than she was so he must be absolutely freezing. But he'd just forgotten. Nothing existed in the world for him but those scraps of metal and fabric and whatever arcane significance they held. Not the weather, not the towels and food supplies at the arboretum, not even his own – companion here. It was probably the mark of a good researcher.

It was probably the mark of an unhealthy obsession.

He edged closer to the water, holding the stick at arms length. The lampshade bobbed, and moved further away. Beatrice groaned. It was _definitely_ going to give the two of them pneumonia, or at least horrible colds, unless she said something.

She stood up. "Can't you – " she began, breaking off as something crunched under her feet. She looked down.

A pair of glasses.

Beatrice looked at them. They had round frames, bent where she'd trodden on them, and thick lenses that were almost opaque from scratches. One of them was cracked. Kneeling down, she lifted them slowly to her eyes, watching the sea and sky in front of her merge into one grey blur, as though her eyes had filled with tears.

_I wore them once. I sat on his lap and he gave them to me, and when I put them on all I saw of anything was colours. And I laughed, and said, "You're a blob, Klaus. A blue blob." And he said, "Well, you're a green blob." And I said, "Is what I see with them on the same as what you see without them?" And he said no, and he explained it to me, but I can't remember what he said now…_

I can't remember… 

"Beatrice?"

Lemony was standing over her, the lampshade in one hand dripping water onto his shoe. "Are you all right?"

She gave a quick nod, not trusting her voice. Lemony's eyes widened as he noticed the glasses. "Are those – do those belong to…"

"I've no idea," she said, quietly, standing up. Her knees stung from kneeling on the uneven ground. "Lots of people wear glasses like these, don't they?"

"Oh, yes," he said, nodding, too fast. "Any number of people could have lost those. Just because you found them here, it doesn't necessarily mean –"

"It doesn't mean _anything_," Beatrice interrupted. Her hands clenched around the glasses. She felt their sharp edges, the knot in her stomach. _Silence knot. All the little mysteries in me._ "It could mean anything, so it doesn't. They're just glasses. They don't help."

"Beatrice…" The hand without the lampshade in it reached out then stopped, wavering in midair, frozen in wondering whether to touch her, pat her shoulder maybe, comfort her somehow. Beatrice held her breath, then let it out in a soft sigh of relief as the hand came to rest on the edge of the suitcase instead. She didn't think she could have borne it if he'd touched her, would have probably broken down altogether in the face of his awkward sympathy.

"We'd better go," she said.

He blinked, glanced around at the dull sky, the grey waves. "We certainly had," he said. "I didn't realise it was so late. You must be freezing."

* * *

The brae was an orchard.

She should have expected it, but it was still startling. Trees that had barely been saplings when she'd left the island were tall and filled with fruit, and new saplings were growing around them where apples had fallen over the years. Birds sang in the branches, insects hummed. The air was thick with the smell of bitter juice.

It was rather beautiful.

It was also disorienting.

"It's all so different," she explained to Lemony as they climbed. "I know which way we ought to be going, but I keep thinking we've taken a wrong turn. None of this is like my memory of it."

"I understand," he said, but she knew he was wrong. He'd never seen this place before anyway. He couldn't understand how it had changed, and how it was to be back here at last, in the place that had come closest to being 'home' for her, and feel as though she'd never seen it before. If they came upon an Aztec temple hidden beyond the trees, or a travelling circus, or a skyscraper, she felt she wouldn't be surprised, so great was the contrast between the reality and her own dim memories.

Not that she really did think of the island as home. It had been, once, but that was long, long ago. Home was wherever she slept at night, and then again it wasn't that at all. It was Sunny baking croissants, Klaus searching through old newspapers, Violet fixing a nightlight to the edge of her folding bed –

A strange, low-pitched cry rang through the trees, breaking her train of thought. She span round, startled, holding her suitcase in front of her like a shield. Lemony snatched up a fallen branch from the floor, dropping half of his collection in the process. "What is it?" he hissed, edging closer to her.

"I'm not sure," Beatrice whispered back. A dark shape was moving towards them through the shadows, something shorter than she was, close to the ground. Lemony stepped in front of her, raising his branch as the creature emerged from among the trees.

Beatrice laughed in relief. It was a sheep, that was all. It wandered up to them and bleated, looking puzzled. "I forgot about you," Beatrice told it, as Lemony set his branch down with a sigh. "It's probably never seen people before. They've been living wild here with nothing that could hurt them, so they're not afraid of us. I expect it wondered what was making all the noise."

"I just wasn't expecting anything else to be here," Lemony said, gathering up his debris again. "Or I'd have recognised the sound. It gave me quite a shock."

Beatrice nodded. "It scared me too. But from what we've seen, I'm pretty sure the sheep are all that lives here. There don't appear to have been any other castaways."

"Or if there were they sailed away again." Lemony looked around. "Which way now?"

"This way, I think." The brae, as well as being more crowded, was also taller than Beatrice remembered, but she thought they were nearly at the top. In which case, all they had to do was keep going forward and –

She pushed aside a pair of low hanging branches and, for the second time in a few minutes, stopped in her tracks.

They'd come to a small clearing. In the middle was a raised patch of ground, as covered in grass as the earth surrounding it. Almost unnoticeable, except that at one end of it was a cairn of smooth stones, and a small, slightly lopsided wooden marker.

"What is it?" Lemony called from behind her. He sounded nervous, as if he thought there might be other inhabitants of the island after all.

"It's…" Beatrice swallowed, stepping to one side. She heard the branches rustle as Lemony came through after her. "It's my – my mother."

There was silence, broken only by the sound of birds, as the two of them looked at the grave.

"I didn't realise we'd come this way," Beatrice said. "I wasn't planning to… I lost my bearings." She looked up at Lemony as she spoke, realising as she saw him that he couldn't really hear her. His face had gone white, his mouth slightly open as though he were trying to say a word he'd long forgotten, and whatever his eyes were focused on was nothing she could see.

"Kit?" It was barely audible, no louder than if he'd simply breathed out. He took a dazed step forward, then another. "Kit," he repeated in that same almost soundless voice, and collapsed to his knees, bags and gathered evidence falling from his hands and rolling in all directions.

Beatrice swallowed again, feeling somehow intrusive; a bizarre thought to have at your own mother's graveside. Her face was hot, and she felt her eyes begin to grow damp, dabbed at them gently with one hand. The other slipped into her pocket, feeling the cold, hard lenses of the glasses that could be anyone's.

Her mother's grave, but not. Not really. Maybe it wasn't so strange that she felt out of place here. The woman beneath the grass had never known her, never spoken to or held her, had only ever thought of or loved her as an abstraction, a child not yet born. Beatrice didn't even know what she had looked like, apart from in an old photograph she'd seen twice and in the resemblance she'd been told about by any number of people. It seemed a harsh thing to think, but it was true – Kit Snicket had only been her mother in the technical sense, just as the man who knelt by her grave, face now buried in his hands, body shuddering every so often with quiet sobs, was only her uncle in the technical sense.

He hadn't known his sister was dead, before she met him. He'd suspected, he'd been almost certain of it by the time she confirmed it to him – so she mustn't feel guilty, he'd insisted, even as he sobbed into a napkin – but he hadn't _known_. He'd been able to hope they might be reunited. But now he knew. Beatrice couldn't imagine what he must be feeling.

Quietly, she sat down beside the grave, one hand pressed against the raised earth as if she could touch the blurry abstraction that was her mother that way, make her solid and human. She closed her eyes. The grass was cold beneath her hand.

* * *

She never knew how long they stayed there. At some point, she opened her eyes again and realised it was getting dark. They'd need to hurry to make the arboretum before nightfall.

"Lemony?" she whispered, the name still feeling strange after all these months. He looked up, pale and red-eyed. "We should go."

He nodded, swallowing back a few last tears. Beatrice stood up, realising as she did that her clothes were almost dry now, anyway. She helped him collect his belongings, offering to carry a few of them herself, and then went to fetch her own case when he refused.

"I know where we have to go now," she said, squinting between the trees. "We're almost there. It won't be long."

She started walking again, expecting him to follow her, but he hung back. "Beatrice?"

She turned back to him. "What's wrong?"

"Where's the other grave?"

It took her a second to realise what he meant. "Through there," she said, pointing to a row of trees at the far side of the clearing. "Do you want to…?"

"N-no." He shook his head. "No," he said, more firmly, "we should get inside. It's far too late."

"Come on, then."

They didn't speak for the rest of the journey, each occupied with their own thoughts. Soon, they turned a corner and the arboretum lay before them. Above them, the first stars were coming out.


	3. Disgust and Despair and Dismay

**The Perils Of Island Life Chapter 3 – Disgust and Despair and Dismay**

This time it wasn't change that left Beatrice reeling, it was the utter lack of it. Apart from the thick grey layer of ten years worth of dust, the room beneath the tree was exactly as she remembered it. An abandoned invention of Violet's – she thought it had been some kind of sewing machine – was on the workbench, the bookshelves were filled with water stained books, with only a few gaps where Klaus had removed their favourite volumes, and the pots and pans Sunny had used to cook their last meal on the island were hanging neatly from their pegs. Beatrice shivered, leaning against the wall for a moment, her hand still on the light switch.

There was a clatter as Lemony set his collection of artefacts down on the workbench, next to Violet's unfinished creation. "My word," he said, sounding almost as shaken as Beatrice felt. "Look at this place. It's almost as remarkable as the Hotel Denouement. I never dreamed…"

"I think I need to sit down," Beatrice said, breaking away from the wall. She managed to reach one of the reading chairs before her legs gave way and she slumped into it, sending up clouds of grey dust that made her cough. Her whole body was trembling. She felt as though she had caught cold after all.

"What's the matter?" Lemony asked, coming over to her. "You don't look well at all. You don't have a fever, do you?"

Beatrice shook her head. "It's just being here," she explained. "It's all so… it's a lot to take in."

He nodded. "I know what you mean."

"No, you don't." She put her hands to her forehead, as if she could push her thoughts back into place. "I know this room. I know it as well as I know anything. But I never thought I'd see it again. Nothing's changed, and it feels as though everything's changed. You can't know what it's like to…"

"_No_, Beatrice." His voice was stern, emphatic, surprising her. She'd never heard him speak to her quite that way. "I know _exactly_ what it's like."

She looked up at him. "You do?"

He drew in breath to speak, then hesitated. Their eyes met, and Beatrice remembered being on the water, only thin planks of wood between her and the cold green depths. Half of her wished she'd never asked the question, wanted to clap her hands over her ears and block out his reply. The other half waited impatiently to hear it.

He closed his eyes then, turned away, the look on his face the same one he'd worn climbing out of the boat, flinching from however many small pains. "I'll make us something to eat," he said. It sounded like an apology. Beatrice wished she knew what for.

"I'll help." She started to get up, but he held up a hand.

"No, you found the way here. I'll cook."

He went over to the kitchen. While his back was turned Beatrice leaned over to the other reading chair and picked up the book that lay there. _The_ book. She opened it at the back, and flipped gently through until she found the last entry, in Klaus' neat handwriting.

_We are ready to immerse ourselves in the world, as our parents did before us. I hope for all our sakes, especially Beatrice's, that we do not immerse ourselves in the sea instead. But there's no point dwelling on that possibility. Violet's repair work is excellent, I have read every book on navigation and steering that I could find, and Sunny is preparing emergency rations as I write this. We are thoroughly prepared for the worst, and the second and third worst as well, and now all that we can do is hope for the best, or at least none of the worst things._

_This may be tempting fate, but I am sure we will survive. We always do._

Beatrice closed her eyes, leaning her head against the side of the chair so that she didn't wet the pages by crying on them. The upholstery smelled of dust and not of Klaus or Sunny or Violet any more, but she breathed in the scent anyway, curling into the cushions. Her right hand slipped down the side of the seat, and she felt something, smooth fabric sliding between her fingers.

She pulled the ribbon from its hiding place and looked at it. It was dark blue, and fraying at the ends. _Of course, she'd wear them till they snapped in two. As long as her hair was in place she didn't care what they looked like, although she preferred not to wear the bright pink one unless she had to. She looked stunned when I asked if I could have it, but then she laughed. And she said she supposed someone had to like that colour. But she was smiling. And she said later that she had to admit it suited me._

The ribbon smelled more like Violet than the chair did, faint traces of the shampoo that Sunny had mixed in one of the big pans still clinging to it. Beatrice folded it, and tucked it into her pocket with the glasses. Then she flicked back through the book, until she reached the first entry in Klaus' handwriting, and started to read.

* * *

She had to stop when she reached Violet's notes on a problem with the water filtration, because Lemony finished making their pasta. Beatrice couldn't identify everything that was in it – presumably whatever ingredients he'd been able to find that were still usable – but it was among the better meals she'd eaten in these kind of circumstances. The fact that she wasn't sure she'd be able to finish it had nothing to do with the quality of the food.

Lemony didn't seem to have much of an appetite either. He twined spaghetti strands around his fork, watching the patterns they made as if they might be part of an important message. It was strange to be watching him eat, even in this whole day of strange things. To be so close to him after all the years she'd spent catching glimpses in crowds, following at a distance along dark, narrow streets, peering through the hole she'd drilled in the floor. She'd had no idea what to expect of him back then, but whatever her expectation had been, he didn't match it, even though the descriptions of him had turned out to be mostly accurate. He was stranger to her now than when they'd first met.

Beatrice found herself yawning. She hadn't realised how far past her bedtime it was, how much her eyelids wanted to close. "Sorry. I think I should get some sleep now," she said, and scooped the last strands of pasta into her mouth.

Lemony blinked, as if he'd forgotten she was there at all. "Oh. All right." He gave a slight frown. "Ah… where _do_ we sleep?"

"Sunny found some futons," Beatrice explained. "They're under the chairs." She stood up and retrieved one of them as she spoke. "Since I don't think I'll fit in to my crib now."

She put _A Series Of Unfortunate Events_ down on the seat where it wouldn't fall off. There was a faint tinkling sound as Lemony's fork dropped into his bowl. "Beatrice? M-may I see that?"

"Of course. Isn't that why you came?"

He put his unfinished pasta to one side and picked up the massive book, slowly, hardly daring to breathe as he touched it. Despite her words Beatrice almost wanted to take it from him. _That belongs to _my _family. It's not yours, you're not part of it, you didn't know them._

"Thank you." The words were hushed, wavering slightly. Beatrice realised, with a sudden shock and rush of embarrassment, that he was trying not to cry again. The embarrassment because of course – she'd forgotten – there _was_ someone in there he knew. The first Beatrice had written in it, _his_ Beatrice, the one he'd loved, the one whose mention still made his voice take on that quietly anguished tone, when it didn't start a full on bout of weeping.

The Beatrice who was her adoptive grandmother. Someone else she'd never met.

They were almost one family. Her mother had said so – Kit Snicket, that was, her biological mother – but for all their connections they were still separate, two strands that wound together but didn't really touch. Beatrice flushed and turned away. "You're welcome," she mumbled, and went to unroll her bed.

* * *

She woke up alone. It was dark, and she assumed at first that Lemony had fallen asleep in his chair, but when she got up to get herself a glass of water from the kitchen she saw he wasn't there. She could hear the faint hiss of rain from outside. Why would he have gone out there, in the dark, in this weather? Nothing she could think of was so urgent that it couldn't wait until morning.

Of course, there were plenty of things he hadn't told her about (and why would he?), but she still couldn't imagine what he was doing…

…or why, she realised as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, he'd left the book lying open, face down on the chair. He _never_ did that.

She turned the light on to inspect the page he'd been reading. Nothing she could find there would have made him run off, as far as she knew, but she couldn't be sure. For all she knew it was a code that only he could understand.

In any case it was probably none of her business. She should ignore it, get her water and go to sleep.

She was doing just that when she thought of something that nearly made her drop her glass. The cave, the one on the other side of the island, the one she'd never seen inside, the one still full of deadly fungi that were kept from the rest of the island by the trees. Lemony didn't know his way around yet, and if he wandered into it, in the dark…

Beatrice gulped down her water, found her umbrella and flashlight, and climbed up into the dark.

* * *

She found him after about five minutes, or rather heard him. There was a sound of something pushing aside branches that seemed far too purposeful to be a sheep, and she made her way quietly toward the sound until she saw the beam of his flashlight, and his dark silhouette between the trees.

She turned off her own flashlight. She was used to working in the dark – the bats preferred it – and she didn't want him to know she was following him just yet, in case he was doing something he wouldn't want her to see. She'd follow him until she was sure he wouldn't be in any danger out here, and then go back to the arboretum.

They made their way up the brae. Lemony wasn't carrying an umbrella, and Beatrice hoped it wouldn't start to rain too heavily. He must be getting drenched. Even more than that, she hoped that it hadn't been raining at all when he left. Going out in this at midnight without even trying to keep dry wasn't like him, and it seemed like a very bad sign.

The dark and the rain and the trees made it difficult for Beatrice to tell which way they were heading, and when she stepped between the trees and found herself once more in the clearing that held Kit Snicket's grave, she was just as unnerved as the first time. Unnerved, and then frustrated with herself. Where else would he have gone?

She was about to turn and leave, when she realised Lemony wasn't stopping. He walked past the mound of earth without a second glance, heading for the other side of the clearing. The other row of trees. The other grave.

_It's none of my business,_ Beatrice told herself as he disappeared into the branches. _He wouldn't want me here. I should go back._

But her curiosity overcame politeness. She crept up to one of the trees and pressed herself against the trunk, keeping her body hidden enough that he couldn't see movement, or no more than he could mistake for a sheep or a flicker of raindrops. From the way he was standing, though, rigid, hands clenched at his sides, she doubted he'd see her if she walked right up to him. He was staring at the grave in silence, at the pile of stones and the crude wooden marker that were almost identical to those on Beatrice's side of the trees. He stood that way for a long, long time.

She jumped when he spoke, not only because she'd become used to the silence but because of the tone of his voice. She would have expected that tearful hush again, but when he spoke his words were louder, and colder. "You know," he said, "I half thought there'd be no grass here."

For a second, Beatrice thought he might be talking to her and pressed closer to the tree. But he hadn't moved at all, and his next words were quite clearly addressed to the man in the ground at his feet. "So you've been here all this time," he said, more softly, but still with that harsh edge Beatrice didn't recognise. "All this time, while I've been hiding from you, running, covering my tracks so you couldn't find me before I found you. All this time I thought I was _stopping_ you…" He threw up his hands, covering his head as if he'd just now noticed the rain. "All this _time_ I've had to read about every one of your vile deeds, all this time I've had to sift through ashes and climb mountains and hide under tables from people who want me dead and all this time I've had to write it all down, every detail, every horrible detail, and all this time I thought that when I was done, when it was over, that you'd be caught, put on trial, punished, and – and – and all this time you were _here_!"

He was pacing now, hands waving, agitated, and in the glow of the darting flashlight beam his eyes were wide and glaring. "You were laughing at me, weren't you?" he demanded, raising his voice as if he expected an answer from the trees. "All this time I thought there could be justice, for Beatrice, for Jacques… for me… all of us, and you got away. You got away again. You must have laughed so much. All this time…"

He stopped moving, took a deep breath, settling himself. "_Can_ you laugh, where you are?" he asked, turning back to the grave, almost casual, and Beatrice shuddered. "Maybe you can't. Maybe – no, let's be honest, Olaf. I _hope_ you can't."

He stepped forward. Beatrice shrank into the shadows, gripping her umbrella till her wrists hurt. "I hope you can't," Lemony repeated, and she had to bite her lip to keep from whimpering at the contempt in his voice, the venom. "Wherever you are, I hope you can't laugh, or smile, or feel anything good. I hope it's dark, and cold, and silent and painful and above all else, Olaf? I hope you're alone. I hope no one ever comes for you, and no one ever will come, and everyone you ever knew is far, far away. Everyone you ever loved, not that someone like you knows the meaning of the word. You never cared for anyone but yourself, how could a – a _monster_ like you ever love anyone? Especially – " He broke off again, hands trembling now, took a shuddering gasp of air and almost screamed the next words. "Especially Kit! How could you ever love her? How _dare_ you, how dare you even touch her, even look at her, you foul, disgusting…"

He did scream then, a desperate, beyond words scream, and gave one sudden, vicious kick to the pile of stones. They flew in all directions, smashing against the trees, and Beatrice fell to her knees, hands pressed to her ears, and barely kept herself from shrieking.

She couldn't block his voice out, even with the rain, even with panic buzzing in her ears. "I'm here with Beatrice, did you know that?" Lemony snarled, circling the grave now, hands opening and closing almost convulsively. He looked deranged, nightmarish, but if this was a nightmare it was the kind where Beatrice couldn't move or turn away. "Not _my_ Beatrice. Not the one you took from me. Kit's daughter. My niece. She's an extraordinary young woman. Talented. Resourceful. Brilliant, really. Did you know that? And did you know that I can hardly bear to look at her? Because of you, Olaf. Because of what you did to me. I can't even…"

There was a flash of lightning. Lemony stopped in his tracks, staring at the scattered stones as if he'd just woken up, a sleepwalker with no idea where or who he was. He moaned, pressed his hands to his face and crumpled to the floor, howling in despair.

Beatrice scrambled upright, not sure how her legs could be supporting her. Tears were pouring down her own face, mixed with the rain. She noticed them, but they didn't mean anything. They weren't important. Only one thing was important right now. One thing she finally understood – should have seen all along – and only one thing she could do.

She'd dropped her light and her umbrella. Snatching them up, she dashed into the clearing and set the umbrella down beside Lemony, to shield him from the worst of the rain. He didn't look up. She turned and fled, down the brae, skidding on wet leaves, running as far and as fast as she could from her distraught, hysterical uncle, her abstracted mother, and –

- she knew now. Too late. She understood now –

- her father.


	4. Various Fallacies Displayed

**Chapter 4**

**Various Fallacies Displayed**

_It never seemed important…_

Beatrice lifted the rock above her head again and brought it crashing down, driving the tent peg into the damp earth. Her fingers were scraped and sore, and her arms ached, and her legs were covered in mud splashes from scrambling across the brae, dragging her suitcase and the bag with the tent in it back to the beach. And she was cold, a deep cold that seemed to reach into her bones. She wasn't tired, though, even though it was so late. She wouldn't be capable of sleeping tonight.

_It never seemed important._ Of course she'd been curious. She'd asked each of her family at some point and got the same sort of answer – _we were never sure. It was never clear. Nothing was ever explained to us. No one was certain. It was complicated. We couldn't possibly tell you. We don't know_.

Had they avoided the subject on purpose? Had they known or at least suspected the truth, and not wanted to risk her finding out? She couldn't know. She could picture Sunny biting her lip as she spoke, Klaus pushing up his glasses on his nose, Violet playing with her hair. She couldn't know what the gestures had meant, and she'd never thought to question them back then. She was a Baudelaire. They were all the parents she needed.

The rain had dropped by now, to a faint drizzle. Beatrice smashed the rock down again and again, until the tent peg was almost buried in the earth and the tent stood firm, slightly lopsided but secure. She crawled inside, unrolled a sleeping bag and curled up in it, holding her knees against her chest. Raindrops pattered on the canvas. The ground was hard and wind blew in through the door flaps, but nothing in the world could have made her stay in the arboretum to face Lemony after what she'd seen.

_You didn't expect him to treat you as family_, she reminded herself. _You didn't plan to be anything more than an associate._

_I didn't expect him to loathe the very sight of me, either._ She shivered, pushing her hand down into her coat pocket to feel the frayed ribbon and broken glasses. _And if we can't be around one another, how will I find my family? Who's going to help me?_

"Me," she said, out loud. She drew her discoveries from her pocket, tied the ribbon through her hair and hooked the glasses over her ears, pushing them up on top of her head so she could still see clearly. "I'll do it myself, if I have to. I'll do it alone."

The word hung in the air. No reply came, from within Beatrice or from outside.

She pulled the sleeping bag up over her head, and lay there in the darkness, sleepless and shaking.

* * *

Eventually, dawn came. Beatrice ignored it for as long as she could.

Something was moving around outside, blundering into the side of the tent and making the whole thing wobble alarmingly. Beatrice stuck her head out of the sleeping bag and was relieved to see that the silhouette was too small to be human. She crawled out of the tent. "Go away," she told the sheep, which bleated at her and lifted a leg, showing her the twisted metal construction tangled round its foot.

Beatrice stared. It was, quite clearly, a mangled whisk. "This," she announced, to the island in general, "is just too much."

The sheep said nothing. Beatrice leaned forward and carefully pulled the remains of the whisk off its leg. It bleated again as if in thanks, and trotted away down the beach, leaving Beatrice sitting alone in the sand, hands full of distorted metal.

_Every year she let me help her make the birthday cake, even when I was really too young to help and had to be stopped from putting my hands in the bowl. And one year, when the cake was all done and in the oven baking, she handed me the whisk and let me lick off the mixture. Violet said it was really bad for me, but Sunny insisted I'd be all right. That's the first argument I remember them having. But they made it up the same day. They always did._

She ran her thumb over the metal, feeling the bumps and ridges of its journey from wherever it had been. At the end of the handle was a ring of small indentations. Beatrice peered at them, remembering again Sunny as she stood by the kitchen table, measuring out flour, holding the heavy bag with both hands, and gripping her whisk in her teeth.

_It could be._

_Or it could have been chewed by a sheep._

_Or they might not be teeth marks at all; they might be made by rocks._

_Or there are other people out there who hold their utensils in their mouths when they're using both hands. Or –_

"Ow!" A sharp end of wire jabbed into her thumb. Beatrice dropped the whisk, bringing the injury to her mouth to suck away the blood. It tasted the way it looked, glistening on the battered steel, red and sharp and metallic. _Not Baudelaire blood_, she thought, and shook herself because that didn't matter, it couldn't matter, it – was starting to matter. Because it would have been Snicket blood, but there was only one Snicket left and he wouldn't tolerate her presence and both those things were down to the man she now knew had fathered her. It was Olaf blood, villain blood, tainted – did you have a last name if you were a Count? Klaus would have known that.

So many people she could belong to. She'd had a family, and there'd been any number of tutors and guardians over the last couple of years. She was part of an organisation that stretched all over the world and, fragmented as it was right now, had lasted for centuries. And somehow she'd ended up alone on a beach.

She raised her other hand to wipe her eyes, and then stopped, because what was the point now in trying not to cry? So she lay down on her side, and let her tears soak into the sand.

* * *

"Beatrice?"

She blinked, and sat up. She hadn't been sleeping, but she'd been close, drifting on the edge of consciousness with her mind full of vague, unfinished thoughts that were half dreams. Maybe the voice calling her name had been one of those. She couldn't see where it had come from.

"Beatrice!"

No, there it was again. She stood up, slowly, feeling sand fall from her hair and the folds of her clothes. From the position of the sun, she guessed it was about half past nine.

It had definitely been a real voice. It didn't sound like Lemony, though. It was a hoarse, rasping voice, but somehow familiar all the same. But it had to _be_ Lemony. There was no one else here.

She could feel her own heart beating. It had to be Lemony. Had to. There was no one else here and she didn't believe in…

"_Beatrice!_"

A tall figure appeared over the edge of a dune, silhouetted in the morning light, a tall figure with hair swept up into two ragged points at the side of its head, and then it started to run toward her and Beatrice nearly screamed and had to bite her lip, one half of her repeating _don't be stupid, no such thing, it's a trick of the light_ and the other half knowing that it wasn't a trick of anything, it was her father, her real father, because Beatrice was the wicked Count's wicked daughter and he'd come to take her back where she belonged. _Run_, that other half of her was shouting, but she couldn't.

And then the figure doubled over and started coughing, and she realised it was Lemony after all.

Just as her panic started to fade, it was replaced by a different and equally horrible fear. But now she could and did run, forward this time, arms waving in the air as though signalling a plane. "The apples!" she shouted. "You have to go back to the trees! Go back!"

"What…?" He looked up as she approached him. His face was streaked with dirt just as hers was with sand, and his hair was all over the place, a tangled mass on top of his head. That was somehow quite a dreadful thing to see. He was such a neat person.

"You've been _poisoned_!" Beatrice cried. "…Haven't you?" she added, because now he'd spoken and now that her heart wasn't beating quite so hard she realised there were no black stains in his mouth, and he'd come from the wrong direction to have been at the cave, unless he'd doubled back.

He stood up, patting sand away from his legs, although he didn't seem to have realised that his clothes were streaked with mud. "Oh…no…" he said. "No, I'm just… not well." He coughed again, into his hand. "That's what I get for… I – I mean, it was the – the rain. Typical of me, catching cold from pathetic fallacy… and I – I hurt my throat… but I certainly haven't been poisoned."

"Pathetic what?" Beatrice asked. It was all she could think of to say. He looked down at her, not quite focusing on her face, as though all he could see of her was a blur. His eyes were watery, she saw, and ringed with red.

"Pathetic fallacy," he said. "It's a rhetorical device, used mostly in fiction, in which a character's external environment reflects their emotional state."

"Oh," Beatrice said. There was a pause. "I didn't know that."

"I'm afraid I broke your umbrella," Lemony said, speaking fast, as if to get the sentence over with. He picked it up from the sand beside him – Beatrice hadn't noticed it in her panic – and held it out to her. She took it, shivering a little again as she saw the red scratches on his hands, and earth beneath his fingernails. One spoke of the umbrella was indeed snapped in two, and hung down from the rest of the frame like a broken bat's wing.

"I must have done it in the night," Lemony said. "I'm very sorry. I was having – terrible dreams."

It took a moment for Beatrice to see the full significance of this. "You were out there all night?"

"Yes." He flushed and turned away from her, to look at the pale sand. He only said that one word, but she could see it. See him, huddled on the desecrated grave, sobbing himself into nightmares, too exhausted even to hide from the rain.

"Well," she said. "Thank you for bringing back my umbrella. It was very kind of you."

He didn't answer for a bit. He looked at the back of his hand, seeming to notice the dirt and scrapes for the first time. "No," he said, "it wasn't." The hand quivered slightly, and he let it fall. "I'm so sorry!" he gasped out, turning to her again, really looking at her this time with those tear-reddened eyes. "I've been looking for you everywhere, I was sure that you'd been – Beatrice, I know how appalling my behaviour was last night. I don't blame you for–" He coughed again, a wheezing, grating sound, and moaned. "I never meant to say any of those things. Certainly not for you to hear them."

"It's all right," Beatrice said. It wasn't entirely a lie. She couldn't hold the way he felt about her against him, not after hearing him break down like that. He was a good person, he really was. It must have been all he could do to be kind to her in that detached way that made such perfect sense now. She sighed. Everything was so tangled. "I think it's better this way. To have everything out in the open."

He took a breath, preparing himself. "Then are you going to come back to the arboretum? I don't like to think of you out here on your own."

_Oh no, please_. She could see the strain that even saying the words put on him, the tension in his muscles. "You really don't have to ask me that."

"I'm sorry," he repeated. He was looking at her shoes by now. "I realise how upset you are with me, but even so, I think it's best for you to be indoors if…"

"Stop it!" Beatrice snapped, startling herself as much as Lemony, who jerked backwards as if he might fall into the sand. "You don't have to keep trying to be nice to me! I know now, remember? How you really feel about me. I'm the daughter of your worst enemy, I _understand_, so you don't have to fake it any more, you don't have to pretend to care about –"

"_What?_" Lemony raised his head, eyes wide and blinking in confusion. "What did you say?"

"What do you mean, what?"

"You think…" Lemony paused, swallowed, started again. "Beatrice, you think that man – you think _Count Olaf_ was your _father_? W-where did you hear a thing like that? Who told you…?"

Beatrice opened her mouth and found she couldn't speak. She seemed to be sinking into the sand. Everything had finally made sense, fitted into a pattern – a horrible sense, a pattern of suffering and grief, but a pattern nonetheless. Now none of it worked, everything was disjointed and out of place again and she was plunging back into chaos.

"_You_ said it!" she managed, from the bottom of the quicksand. "You said you can't stand the sight of me, because I'm his! I heard you, I saw you, you can't just gloss over it to make me feel better!"

"But I didn't mean –" He cut himself off, abruptly, shaking his head. "No, never mind. I think it's best if we don't discuss this." He was turning away, dismissing her, or trying to, and she wanted to just accept that but she couldn't.

"So I'm right?" she pressed. "Olaf was my father?"

He opened his mouth and paused for just a second, but in that second she knew. That had been genuine incomprehension on his face.

"But if I'm _not_ his daughter," she went on, cutting him off, gripping her umbrella, knowing her voice was too strident and too loud and unable now to do a single thing about it, "then why can't you look me in the eye? Why do you flinch away when I get near you? You act as if I'm poisoned. As if I'm dangerous. Why would you treat me that way if I'm not his child?"

"Because I'm not strong enough." It was a whisper, a breath, like wind blowing through branches. "Not for this… I'm such a coward. I'm so wretchedly _afraid_."

"_Of what?_" And now she was screaming, actually screaming, and it dawned on her that she was still wearing the glasses and the ribbon, and her thumb was bleeding again. "If I'm not Olaf's, if I'm not the daughter of a monster, _then what's wrong with me?_"

"Nothing." He was still quiet, but firmer now, clearer, definite. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with you, Beatrice."

He looked into her eyes. "It's my fault," he said. "It's all my fault. Beatrice…" He wouldn't take his eyes off her now, even though they were brimming with tears and his mouth was trembling and she wanted so badly to look away. And then he said something else, and what little sense she'd been able to make of the world evaporated, and Beatrice – tired, hungry, and hopelessly bewildered – fell forward onto the sand.


	5. Orphans of the Storm

**Orphans of the Storm**

She woke up slowly, opening bleary eyes to see nothing but dull white canvas at first. Rolling on to her back, she looked up at the roof of the tent, which she noticed was at a straighter angle than it had been when she'd put it up. The light shining through the canvas hurt her eyes and made her squint. She must have been unconscious for quite a while.

She'd read books in which people fainted after being shocked, but she'd only experienced it herself once before and it hadn't been as easy as the books would have had her believe. Admittedly this time it had been after a series of shocks and emotional upsets, and hardly any sleep, but it seemed strange. She still felt dreadful. She'd been sick and shivery ever since last night, but it was worse now, a painful twisting in her stomach. Her throat ached, too, and her head seemed weighted down.

The sleeping bag was draped over her like a blanket, and underneath her was nothing but sand. It was uneven and not very comfortable. She rolled on to her other side, and found herself looking at a pile of ripe apples. Next to them was a coconut split in half, and next to that were the glasses, the ribbon, and the whisk, arranged neatly on the sand.

Beatrice reached out and took an apple. She bit into it, closing her eyes as she tasted the bitter juice. Years had passed since she'd eaten this fruit, but it was so familiar to her that she might have eaten it all her life.

And she was ravenous. Before she knew it the apple was gone, reduced to stalk and a few seeds. She sat up. The shaking in her body intensified as she moved, and her head seemed to whirl gently. When she held still everything calmed again, and she realised then that her faint hadn't been purely from emotional strain. It had been emotional strain, tiredness, and the same cold that Lemony had.

She finished off the rest of the apples, then drank the coconut water, managing not to spill too much despite the awkwardness of drinking from the shell. That was better. Her head still felt too heavy, but the pain in her stomach and the ache in her throat were gone, and she could think a bit more clearly.

There were questions that needed to be answered.

Luckily for Beatrice, she knew exactly who could answer them. And this time he might try to avoid her, but there was one advantage to being on a deserted island. There were only so many places he could be.

* * *

As it turned out, she didn't have to look too hard.

He was out on the coastal shelf. Scavenging for clues again, she assumed, although when she spotted him he wasn't doing anything much. He was sitting on a rock, not even moving, and his back was to her, so that at first she wasn't sure whether she had really spotted him or just another pile of detritus. Then he shifted slightly and she could make out the outline of his long coat.

She crept forward, taking small, careful steps. The way he held himself gave her the impression that if she startled him he might fly away, or dart under a rock like a woodlouse, fleeing from her yet again. Her feet made hardly any sound, only a faint crunching no louder than the wind and waves, but she was sure the nearer she got that he would hear it, or the sound of her breath, or just sense her presence in the silent change of the atmosphere behind him.

To her surprise, and gradual puzzlement, none of this happened. She was right behind him, close enough to touch, holding her breath, and he didn't move. There was something in his hands. That was what captured his attention. It was broad, and flat, and long, and from what Beatrice could see it looked like a piece of driftwood.

She bit her lip and inched closer, one tiny step at a time, peered over Lemony's shoulder – he didn't even blink – and thought she might pass out again.

It _was_ driftwood. It was cracked, and worn, and battered by the sea. Someone had painted a word on it once, in bright red paint, but the paint was peeling and faded now and the word had broken along its length and split in two, turning most of the letters into strange, incomplete shapes.

She could tell what the word had been, though.

_Beatrice._

_

* * *

I remember – _

_- the storm, we weren't expecting the storm, we weren't planning to go very far that day –_

_- and the wind came up and Sunny said she didn't like the look of it, the clouds, and Klaus said _we need to _something but he never got to finish –_

_- the water was coming over us and I couldn't see because of the rain and I felt the wood breaking and Violet had her ribbon in her hands and the wind blew it away and then I put my hand out and I fell and I was in the water –_

_- under the water –_

_- and I came up again and there was a piece of the boat and I climbed on to it and I tried to kick my legs and get back but I was floating away –_

_- they were floating away –_

_-and Klaus I think it was was shouting _hold on, we'll find you, hold on, don't let go _and then I couldn't see him and then I couldn't hear him any more because of the wind and I didn't let go. And I was spinning and going under and coming up and I held on and I held on and then I wasn't moving._

_And I was on a beach. In the dark. It was night time._

_And that's the first time I ever fainted._

_Five years ago. And it was a year before I could get in to a boat again, but I had to because how else…_

…_how else could I…?

* * *

_

Beatrice made one sound, just an inbreath, a half gasp, sucking air into her quaking body. Barely audible even to her, but it was that which somehow snapped Lemony out of his trance. He sprang from the rock, whipping round to face her so fast that he almost knocked her over before she could move. "How-" he babbled, clutching the nameplate to his chest as if he could hide it from her, "- what – what are you – why did you –"

"Where did you get that?" Beatrice asked, speaking as steadily as she could.

"You weren't –" He hung his head. She noticed that his hair was slightly damp, and most of the dirt was gone from his face. He'd washed it off in the sea, evidently. "You weren't meant to see. I thought you'd still be asleep."

His hair was wet, but the nameplate wasn't. It was perfectly dry, and that was impossible, if he'd just picked it up. It only made sense if…

"_How long_," Beatrice asked, "have you _had_ that?"

"It…" He glanced to the side for just a second, as if planning to run, but stayed where he was. Running wouldn't have helped. She could chase him down. "I found it yesterday. When you found the glasses."

"And you didn't _tell_ me?" She heard her voice rise again, felt herself tense despite her promise to herself that she'd stay calm and not start screaming again. Everything else she could accept, but keeping this from her – "You promised to help me!" she shouted. "You knew how much this meant to me! How could you hide something like this? You thought I didn't deserve to know the truth?"

"No, you don't!" His head snapped up again, eyes meeting hers, pinning her where she stood, and the nameplate shook in his hands. "You, of all people, do not deserve to know the truth. Because the truth is always dreadful. What you _deserve_, Beatrice, is to find your family again, and live in a safe, beautiful, fireproof house and go to a good school with a well stocked library and fascinating teachers, and grow into a brilliant young woman and one day, one wonderful day when you least expect it, meet a young man or woman who is just as kind and intelligent and witty and attractive and noble as you are yourself, and fall hopelessly in love with them and have a family of your own and spend the rest of your lives together in bliss and happiness. And I'll never be able to give you that, but I'm not going to let you give up hope. However many other hopes I destroy, however much misery and despair I bring to the rest of this world, I_ will not _let you end up like me!"

Beatrice said, "Oh…"

As a reaction to such a passionate speech, it was ridiculously inadequate. But for a moment it was the only word she could manage. Things were starting to fall into a pattern again, one that in some places was just as painful, but was also wider and deeper and contained things she hadn't noticed before. And now she saw it, it was really quite simple.

Her head was spinning again. She sat down on the rock, perching on the edge, supporting most of her weight with her legs. Lemony watched her, wary as ever, arms wrapped around the nameplate, holding _Beatrice_ to him.

"You know," Beatrice said, looking up at him, "I already know the boat sank. I was there when it happened. And I have no intention of giving up hope. Not while there's still a chance that my family is out there somewhere."

Lemony sighed, and finally relaxed his grip, letting his hands fall to his sides, his right still holding the nameplate. "I should have realised that," he said. "You're so much like them. And like _her_, of course. She was the bravest person I ever knew."

He sat down, perched as she was on the other edge of the rock, facing away from her, head rested in his hands. The nameplate lay on his lap. "I owe you an explanation, don't I?" he said, softly. She felt him shudder as he breathed in. "Well – first of all, I'm not familiar with every detail of my sister's personal life, but as far as I know your father was a man named Dewey Denouement. He was the sub-sub-librarian of the Hotel Denouement catalogue, where every piece of information VFD collected over the years was stored."

"I know about that," Beatrice said. "Kind of. My parents never told me any of the details, just that there was the catalogue, and Dewey died in some sort of accident."

Lemony nodded. "It was definitely an accident." He didn't elaborate, but Beatrice got the feeling there was more to it than that. She didn't press for details, though. Right now she was more concerned with not scaring him off again. She could tell the effort he was making to even talk to her this openly.

"Anyway," he continued, "my sister – your mother – Kit worked with him on the library, and they fell in love. I heard they were secretly engaged, but I haven't been able to confirm that. It would have had to be kept secret, because Dewey had one of the most dangerous jobs in all of VFD. He was the guardian of all our records, all our achievements. He had to stay out of sight as much as he could. Many people didn't believe he really existed." He hesitated. "I never met him," he said, eventually. "I wish I could tell you more. I can't. But I'm sure that – from what I know of him, I think he would have been very proud of you."

He fell silent again. Beatrice edged further on the rock, till they were almost touching, back to back. She waited.

"As for my behaviour…" He took another deep, slightly laboured breath. "All I can say is that I'm sorry. I've been horrible to you. I don't think you realise yet how much. I've been weak and foolish and incredibly self-centred, and I only hope I can explain. I – I won't ask you to forgive me, but please try to understand."

"I already do," Beatrice said. She turned to face him. "I think I've figured it out already. It shouldn't have taken me this long, but I guess I've been pretty self-centred too. I keep forgetting this is your story as well. When you said you can hardly bear to look at me, it wasn't because of who my father was, it was because of my _mother_. And my – grandmother, I suppose. Your Beatrice. I remind you of the people you've lost."

Lemony sighed again, running a hand through his damp hair. "Not exactly," he said. "Part of it is that, the resemblance, I mean, but mostly it's just – you. The person you are in your own right."

"But…" Beatrice rubbed her temples. Her head was starting to hurt. "You said it wasn't anything to do with me."

"I said there was nothing _wrong_ with you. And I meant it. You're an exceptional person, Beatrice, and I – and I – and I have already told you this twice, so it shouldn't be so difficult to say it again…"

"You love me?" Beatrice said. "That's what you told me earlier. You said you love me."

"Yes." He let out a long breath of relief. "And the only reason I can even think about telling you that is because we're here, on a deserted island where very few terrible things can happen. And even then… when I said it earlier you collapsed. It scared the life out of me. It was as though you'd been struck down. Of course, then you started snoring and I realised you were just exhausted. I don't blame you. I think spending all your time with me would be draining for almost anyone."

"What are you trying to say?" Beatrice asked. "I don't understand. You've been avoiding me because…"

He reached behind him, not looking, feeling for her hand, and took it gently in his own. Beatrice froze, hardly able to breathe, staring at her own fingers as they curled round the scratched, typing-callused ones of the man who had never before touched her without needing to.

"I hope you never understand," Lemony said, softly. "I hope you never have to know what it's like, to truly lose someone you love. To know that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you search, how much you weep and plead and hope, they will never return, and you will never be able to find them. That kind of pain, that grief, that utter desolation, is something that…" He made a short, breathy sound, something close to being hollow laughter. "That, until last night, I would have said I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Clearly I'm not as decent a person as I thought I was."

Beatrice shuddered, remembering exactly what he'd said last night, and he squeezed her hand, a reflexive gesture of comfort. "You see?" he said. "How pathetic it really is? You need my help and I run away. You need me to care for you and I treat you like a stranger. I avoid you, I push you away, because that way I won't have to lose you. And now I do _this_ again," he added in a disgusted tone, wiping at his face with the hand that wasn't holding hers. "I've cried every day for the last twelve years, you know. Apart from the days I spent unconscious for whatever reason."

Beatrice gripped his hand. "You're not pathetic," she said, "and you're not weak, and you're not a coward. You –"

"You don't have to be polite about it," Lemony said. "I know perfectly well that I'm all those things. I knew all along that I was treating you badly and I still did it. I should have answered your letters the minute I realised who you were, and I shouldn't have been so distant when we were working together and I should have told you about the – "

"_Oh!_" Beatrice exclaimed. She hadn't meant to interrupt, but something that had been nagging at the back of her thoughts for a while had just fallen into place. "_That's_ what you said on the boat. And that's why you said you'd told me twice already."

Lemony nodded. "Oh, yes. I can be quite honest with people when I know there's no way either of us will survive."

"But we have survived," Beatrice pointed out.

"And when I don't think they can hear me."

"I couldn't. I thought you were talking about the book again. But that's not the point." She wriggled closer, and leaned against him. He was warm, and shivering, and he smelled of someone who'd been out all night in the rain. "My point is, we survived. The truth _isn't_ always dreadful, and the worst _doesn't_ always happen, and sometimes things grow in the ashes, remember?"

"Oh… Beatrice…" He turned toward her, then, and they faced one another with only the space marked out by their arms between them. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's hopeless, it really is. There are people in this world with the strength to bear misfortune, like you, and then there are people like me, who just…"

"Would you stop that?" Beatrice snapped. "I told you already, I don't think you're weak or pathetic or a coward. You are self-centred, though. Do you think you're the only frightened, lonely person in the world?"

He blinked at her. "Of – of course not."

Beatrice leaned closer, eyes fixed on his, voice lowered. "And do you think you're the only frightened, lonely person on this island?" She sighed, looking down at the grey rock between them and the nameplate now trapped between both sets of legs. "I may not have gone through everything you've gone through, and you're right, I don't know what it's like to lose anyone for good. But I know what it's like to not know whether the people you love are dead or alive, and just because I won't let myself give up on them…" Her own voice began to tremble now, and a few tears spilled down her cheeks as she made her own admission. "Doesn't mean I'm not afraid."

"Oh, Beatrice." He gripped her hand again, and closed his eyes, dark lashes wet and glistening. "I'll help you look for them. And I won't hide anything else from you. I wish I could do more than that. There are – so many things I wish that I could do for you, but I just…"

"It's okay." She held up the other hand. "You don't have to keep apologising. Only…"

The next words caught in her throat. There were only four of them, but it would be so simple, so much easier, to let them go unsaid. Let things stay the way they had been. That was safer. Maybe she really did understand him, after all.

"I love you, too," she said. "I know it doesn't help anything. I realise we're never really going to be close, and I accept that. But I wanted you to know."

They sat for a while without speaking. Beatrice could feel Lemony's pulse in his hand as it surrounded hers, unless that was her own heart beating. The waves made the only sound, crashing against the shore, bringing more and more lost things from the world outside.

She was never certain whether he really said the next two words. They could have been a trick of the waves, or of her mind. They sounded like "Thank you."

"We have work to do," she said, looking out at the ocean.

"We do." He let go of her hand and stood up. She slid down from the rock, a little numb from sitting so long on a hard surface.

Lemony picked up the nameplate. "Here," he said, handing it to her, and their fingers brushed together as she took hold of the faded wood. "This is yours."

He turned, and started walking back to the beach. Beatrice looked down at the fragment of the lost boat for a long while, then she tucked it inside her jacket, and followed.


	6. Prepare and Hope

Notes: Some people were wondering what Lemony _did_ say in the first chapter (hi, Milette Tails Prower) so for the record, the line about the beans was, actually, "sorry for being so distant".

**Prepare and Hope**

Not much work got done that afternoon, after all. Lemony had another coughing fit as they were climbing the brae, and had to cling to a tree during most of it to keep himself upright.

Beatrice shook her head. "You look terrible," she said, leaning on her case, which she was dragging across the island for the third time. "When we get back, just go to bed. It doesn't look as though you got any more sleep than I did."

He shook his head. "No, I –" The rest of the sentence was lost in another set of coughs. Beatrice wandered away a little, looking for some landmark that would help her be sure they were going the right way.

She glanced between the trees, and saw the wooden grave marker reading _Count Olaf_. Not only that. It was upright again, and behind it the cairn was rebuilt into its neat pyramid.

"He saved your life," Lemony said, from behind her. Beatrice jumped a little. She hadn't realised he was standing there. "The idea of my being grateful to that man for anything is…" He shuddered, unable to find the word. "But he saved you. At the end. I have to face that."

"It's okay," she said, softly. He gave her a faintly puzzled frown, as if he wasn't sure what she meant. For her part, Beatrice wasn't really sure either.

* * *

Lemony did spend most of the afternoon asleep. Beatrice spent it curled up in one of the reading chairs, dozing sometimes, sometimes reading, sometimes watching Lemony as he slept. He was an uneasy sleeper, writhing and kicking and occasionally muttering things like "…incited to coffee…"

She did love him. She hadn't realised she was going to say that until she did, but it was true. Because in spite of his fear, he'd helped her when no one else could. Because he was risking his life to tell her family's story, in spite of the pain it caused him, because it was right and fair and he'd promised. And he thought he wasn't _strong_ enough?

_Uncle Lemony_, she thought, trying out the words. They still felt somehow inappropriate. Not because she didn't see him as family, but because… it was hard to think of them as an adult and a child. Neither of them had authority over the other. They were equal. And not just colleagues any more.

_We're friends, I think. As much as he'll let us be, and even though that isn't very much… I think he trusts me as much as he can trust anyone. He's trying. That's the best I can hope for._

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep again.

By the next morning she felt fine. She couldn't remember ever having been really ill. Most things she shook off after a day. Lemony seemed better as well, although he was still pale and sniffly. She left him sitting at the workbench with a cup of strong tea and a pile of notebooks, and went to start work on the boat.

* * *

Three days before they were due to leave, she was lying underneath the boat – she had it propped up on some rocks to get at the underside – when a shadow fell over her, blocking the sunlight from her workspace. She wriggled out, rubbing her eyes and blinking as they protested the sudden brightness. Lemony was standing over her, silhouetted by the sun.

"You're in my light," she told him.

"Oh. Sorry." He moved to one side and sat down on the sand. Beatrice sat up, crossing her legs beneath her. This wasn't the first time he'd visited her while she was working. He came most days, because most days his investigations led him to the beach for at least half an hour. Normally he would stay for about five minutes. He'd ask her how the boat was coming along and she'd tell him, and they'd talk about that or, less often, about his own work, or about nothing in particular. Making small talk wasn't something he was used to; she could tell by the way he closed his eyes when there was a pause, searching inside himself for something to say. She kept thinking of that anagram in his correspondence – _my silence knot_, the knot he'd kept tied for years. He was loosening it now for her sake, to be a good uncle or friend or whatever he saw himself as, and sometimes the responsibility of that made Beatrice uneasy. Not that she'd had much practice at making light conversation herself.

Today, though, something was different. He looked pale and shaken, not attempting to make eye contact with her as he usually did. He looked out at the sea, seeming not to be focused on anything much. His left hand sketched random squiggles in the sand.

"Are you all right?" Beatrice asked, when he didn't speak again.

His hand stopped moving, lying flat on the sand, scuffing out the scribbled patterns. He swallowed once, then spoke, voice faint and dazed. "I'm finished."

"Finished?" Beatrice echoed.

"The book. It's done. I actually finished it. I still have to edit some things, of course, but apart from that it's – over."

"Congratulations," Beatrice said. She wasn't certain that was really the appropriate thing to say, but it was all she could think of.

"Thank you," he said, automatically. He looked up at the sky, where a gull flew past, far above. "I never thought that I would get this far," he said, and his fingers dug into the sand. "I never really expected to succeed. All these years I didn't think that I would even live long enough to write that last word, and now…"

He closed his eyes, and let out a long breath. Beatrice found herself looking at his eyelids, thinking how strangely delicate they were, like bat's wings. Suddenly she missed the bats, and her office, and even the dingy lobby of the Rhetorical Building, so much that it was painful. She missed the _world_.

"We'll be going back soon," she reminded herself. It didn't occur to her that she'd spoken out loud until Lemony's eyes flicked open. He looked straight at her for a moment, then his gaze dropped back to the sand.

"We will," he said. "Of course, I would have had to anyway. Trying to contact my publishers from out here would be impossible."

Beatrice frowned. Once again, she got the sense that they were operating from two opposing positions. "What do you mean?"

He looked at her again, his eyebrows half raised in an expression she could only think of as bitter amusement, although it was as far from being a positive emotion as any other he displayed. "I did tell you I'm not a brave person," he said, but his voice was gentle. _I don't expect you to understand, Beatrice. I don't _mean_ for you to understand such things._

She understood anyway. "You'd like to stay here."

He nodded. "I'm glad you came with me," he said. "I'm glad you found me and I made you that promise, because my duty – my promise to her…" He gave a soft sigh – _here I go again_ – and took a folded handkerchief from his pocket, dabbing at his eyes with it. "I would hope that it would have been enough to make me go back, that I wouldn't have failed her at the last, but frankly I'm not sure. The world is – not kind… But I have another promise to fulfil now, and I don't mean to give up on it. I want you to know that."

"I do," was all Beatrice could trust herself to say. She could feel herself growing tearful along with him. She wanted to say more, that he had nothing to be ashamed of, that the world wasn't always that bad, but she'd told him those things before and he didn't believe them.

He put his hand on top of hers then, squeezing it gently. "I want you to know that," he repeated, "because if we get back to the world… I've been trying not to shut you out the way I used to. I – I will still try. But – you were right when you said we'll never truly be close. I'm just not capable any longer of allowing myself to feel that way. So if we get back…" He took in a long, deep breath. "If I seem indifferent, if I don't appear to care, I still do. More than anything else, I care about what happens to you. Will you remember that?"

She nodded, closing her eyes, sure she really would start crying now if she tried to speak.

"Good." She heard him move then, felt the sand shift as he leaned toward her, and then he kissed her on the forehead. Only for a second, but even after he'd moved away she felt the warmth there, seeming to radiate from the spot. His chin had been prickly. It was difficult to shave, on a deserted island. Klaus had felt like that, once.

He stood up. She felt the movement and opened her eyes, looking up at him and squinting in the sunlight again, one hand raised to her forehead feeling where his lips had touched her.

"I'll let you get back to work," he said, quietly.

She tried to smile. "Okay."

He hesitated a little, but then he turned and walked away down the beach. He stopped only once, to bend down and pick something up from the sand. Beatrice couldn't make out what it was from this distance, but it shone in the sunlight. He stood and looked at it for a while, then slipped it into his pocket and continued walking.

Beatrice watched him till he was out of sight.

* * *

He didn't come to the beach the next day.

In the evenings they sat and read, barely speaking. Sometimes Beatrice would look up from behind the cover of her book and catch his eyes on her as if he wanted to say something, but then he would turn away, focusing on some other thing in the room as though that was what he'd meant to look at all along. He rarely looked at her even when he did speak to her now. After their conversation on the beach the old wariness had begun to creep back into his habits.

Beatrice supposed he was preparing himself. The knot was tightening again. At least she understood now why he behaved that way. She might not like it, but she understood.

She thought she understood. But the day before they were due to leave, things changed again. It started when she finished the boat.

She had expected to be working on it well into the afternoon, but the final repairs turned out to be easier than she expected, and she finished work around midday. As she ran back to the arboretum all she felt was relief, delight that at least one thing had gone well.

The feeling faded as she scrambled down through the hole. Lemony was sitting at the workbench, and she looked up just in time to see him shove what looked like a small piece of paper into his pocket. His eyes were wide with shock. He turned to face her with a nonchalant expression that probably wouldn't have fooled her even if she hadn't seen what came before it.

"Beatrice!" he said, far too brightly. "I didn't expect you back so early."

"I made better time than I thought I would," Beatrice said, slowly. "Everything's ready. We can leave as soon as the water gets deep enough."

"That's wonderful," he said, and this time it wasn't forced at all but perfectly sincere. "If you'll excuse me, I – er – I need to take care of something outside, just for a moment. It won't take long."

Beatrice stood aside to let him pass. There was a chill in her stomach as she watched him leave. She sank into the chair he'd just vacated, resting her head against the hard workbench.

He was keeping something from her, after promising he wouldn't. She wished she could feel indignant about that, but all that was in her was that cold, creeping unease. Lemony Snicket was not a man who broke promises without thinking.

But he'd made another promise before that one, hadn't he? _I'm not going to let you give up hope. I will not let you end up like me._

The cold grew deep, and painful. Whatever was on that paper, it wasn't good news.

* * *

She lay awake for hours that night, waiting for him to fall into deep sleep, before concluding that it wasn't going to happen. She would just have to be careful, and hope he didn't open his eyes.

She scrambled out of her futon and crept over to the reading chair where he'd left his coat. There was a secret pocket in it, sewn into the lining. She reached in, hands trembling, and pulled out a bottle. Inside it was a piece of newspaper, slightly crumpled, curled into a tube.

On the side pressed against the glass she could see a weather report (_partly sunny, partly cloudy_) and the previous day's lottery numbers (_4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42_) and half of an advertisement for carpets. There was a cork in the neck of the bottle. It seemed to have been removed and reinserted a few times.

Beatrice found her own jacket and retrieved a small metal tool from the pocket. She gripped it tightly, and tried to push the point into the cork. On the first try it missed completely, and on the second try it hit the glass with a horribly loud clacking sound, and then she gripped the bottle tighter and it slipped from her hand and cracked open on the floor.

The newspaper uncurled itself, still face down. She could just bend down and pick it up. It would only take a second. Bend down, pick it up, turn it over.

_The truth is always dreadful._

_Hold on, Beatrice, we'll find you._

_Without Violet, Klaus and Sunny I am…_

_You, of all people, do not deserve to know the truth._

_Don't let go._

_An orphan I'm an orphan I'm not I can't be I won't be but maybe…_

Her hand froze, an inch from the paper. She couldn't make it move. She dropped to her knees, looking at the broken glass, her fingernails, the discount carpet extravaganza.

_Turn it over._

She couldn't.

A lamp came on with a click, and she almost screamed. Lemony came over to where she was kneeling, peering sleepily at the broken bottle. "Oh," he said. "You weren't meant to find that just yet. I was going to give it to you on, well, tomorrow now I suppose – what on earth's the matter?"

Beatrice turned to him. She was at the bottom of a frozen lake. All sound was muffled there, and everything around her was dark and cold. Lemony recoiled a little at the look on her face.

Then he knelt down beside her, avoiding the glass. "Tell me," he said, and he reached out to her, just a little, about halfway, and Beatrice heard herself make one quiet, half-choked sob and then she fell into his arms and wept.

There was no control left in her. Every tear she hadn't cried in five years, every fear she hadn't let herself give in to, was surging through her now like a thunderstorm, smashing her against their rocks. She clung to Lemony, howling, screaming, until her lungs hurt from gasping in breath and her hands ached from gripping the fabric of his pyjamas. It didn't seem that she could ever stop crying.

Eventually sheer breathlessness quieted her, and she slumped against Lemony, her head on his shoulder, too exhausted to move, whimpering like a very young child and hiccupping softly. She was cold still, but his arms around her were warm and he held her firmly, one hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair. His voice was soft, gentle, repeating "Beatrice, Beatrice…" as he held her. She bit her lip. He knew there were no other words, none that would make it better. All there was was holding her and quietness and warmth and not letting go.

"How bad is it?" Beatrice asked. Her voice was small and quiet, and she was talking into his neck because she couldn't move and couldn't bring herself to look into his face. He squeezed her tighter.

"I need…" she said, and stopped, and breathed in, and continued. "I need you to tell me. I know you don't want to hurt me, but I need you to. I'll go back to the world, I promise. I'll immerse myself. They'd want me to. But I need you to tell me what happened, because I don't think I can look at that paper." _And hold on to me. Please._

He didn't answer for some time. His hand stopped moving. All of him did, in fact. He seemed not even to be breathing.

Beatrice lifted her head. He was staring into the distance, a look of comprehension slowly dawning on his face. "_Oh_," he said, in a tone of startled recognition and, to Beatrice's complete bewilderment, relief.

He took his hand from her hair, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a crumpled handkerchief. "Here," he said, handing it to her. "Dry your eyes. Beatrice, I'm dreadfully afraid that I've misled you again. It's not what you think."

Beatrice wiped her face with a shaking hand. She couldn't seem to process his words. Her mind understood what they meant, but any relationship they might have had to her was lost on her.

Lemony shook his head, looking disgusted with himself. "I should have _known_," he muttered. "You knew I was hiding something from you, and based on my previous behaviour – good heavens, Beatrice, the things you must have thought! Why didn't you _say_ anything?"

"I didn't w-want to know," Beatrice mumbled, wringing the handkerchief in her hands. "I knew you wouldn't keep it from me unless – unless it was something really bad."

He nodded, biting his lip. "Of course. Of course you did. Oh, I should have seen this coming." He looked her in the eyes then, and frowned, noticing a strand of hair that had become stuck to her face as she cried. Gently, he smoothed it back into place. "But it's not bad news at all, Beatrice. Quite the reverse."

"But then why…" She caught herself sniffling, and had to use the handkerchief again. "Why didn't you show me?"

"Because I so rarely get the chance to do things like this. It didn't seem to make any practical difference whether I showed you straight away or left it for a few days, and tomorrow _is_ very special."

Beatrice nodded. "Decision Day."

Lemony stared at her. "No, that's today. It's after midnight. You mean you don't remember?"

Something clicked in Beatrice's mind. Tomorrow was special…

But if _that_ was what he was hiding from her, then that meant…

_It's not bad news at all. Quite the reverse._

Her hand shot out before she knew it, and once again she was watching from a distance, once again she was shaking, but this time everything was bright and clear and almost dazzling and the paper was in her hand and, hardly breathing, she turned it over.

OPHELIA LIBRARY SAVED FROM DEMOLITION, the headline read. _The Ophelia public library reopened yesterday, after a hard-working band of volunteers disproved official claims that it was structurally unsafe. This reporter could not learn the identity of the young man and woman who started the crusade, but in the opinion of…_

The rest of the article was missing. Most of the paper was taken up by a photograph of a smiling woman pretending to read a romance novel. In the background, behind her left shoulder, were three blurry figures. A woman whose long, dark hair fell across her eyes, a man with a round face and even rounder glasses, and a girl of about Beatrice's age, whose mouth was open as if she was speaking.

Beatrice gazed at the picture. There was no mistaking those three figures. They might be blurry, and slightly smudged, and in black and white, but she knew their faces as well as she knew her own.

She looked up at Lemony. There was something odd about his expression, and at first she couldn't tell what it was. Then she realised. He had the beginnings of a smile. For the first time since she'd known him, he didn't look downcast or miserable at all.

"Happy birthday, Beatrice," he said, and Beatrice lost all control of her emotions again, giving a shriek loud enough that it even startled her and flinging her arms around his neck.

* * *

She was sure, after that, that she wouldn't be able to sleep, but tiredness soon asserted itself and she eventually drifted off, the folded newspaper in her hand. In fact she and Lemony both slept for rather longer than they meant to, and it was mid-afternoon before they were finally ready to leave.

As Beatrice loaded the final cases into the boat, Lemony tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, one hand raised above her eyes to shield them from the sun. "Yes?"

"Do you remember…?" He looked down at the sand, shifting nervously. "A couple of days ago, on the beach, my warning you not to… to expect too much from me, when we get back?"

Beatrice nodded, slowly, resisting the urge to sigh out loud. Some things were still as tangled up as ever. "I remember."

"Well…" He took a deep breath, and raised his head. "Pretend I never said it. It was selfish, and, frankly, ridiculous of me to think I could go on shielding myself. I realised that last night. The look in your eyes, when you thought the worst had happened… you were devastated. Helpless. _Alone_. And I – I felt as though I'd swallowed that broken bottle. I already love you too much. I'd be destroyed if anything happened to you. But there's nothing I can do about that any more, so all I _can_ do is stop making us both more miserable than we need to be." He seemed to consider this for a moment, then gave a wry half-smile. "Believe it or not, that's me being positive."

Beatrice genuinely wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at this. What came out when she opened her mouth was a soft giggle, which turned out to be the better reaction. For just a second, Lemony's half-smile deepened into a real one before fading. "I realised," Beatrice said, returning it. "You said '_when_ we get back'."

"So I did." He stepped closer, peering into the boat. "Are we ready to go?"

"Well, I'm ready. The boat's ready." Beatrice's voice softened, and she laid a hand carefully on Lemony's arm. "Are you ready?"

He swallowed, looking pale. "Frankly, no, I'm still not. But this is the only chance I'll have."

Beatrice's hand slipped down to take hold of his, squeezing it gently. He looked startled just at first, but then squeezed back.

"Climb in, then," she said, and with one last look back at the beach and the brae, the quiet graves and bitter trees and secret places, Lemony did just that.

And they immersed themselves in the world.


End file.
